OMG! Osborne must go!

The most important job in the UK at this time is Chancellor of the Exchequer. He has to deal with the most complex of financial, fiscal, economic and political issues during the most difficult of times since the1970’s.

So who is the intellectual giant minding the shop?

Step forward Gideon aka George Osborne, MP. And what do we know of him?

He has a 2.1 in History, a mediocrity’s result. His practical work experience was 1 week folding towels at Selfridges. Thereafter, it has been only politics, first as a Tory researcher and then, at 30 an MP, Shadow Chancellor 4 years later, and Chancellor at 39.

So can anybody tell me what single qualification this young chap has for the most demanding of political appointments?

Not unexpectedly, he is turning out to be a one-man train crash.

His budgets have been met with something approaching derision, witness the ‘pasty’ tax. His reduction targets on both debt and revenue budgets have been missed. He has had some distasteful publicity over ‘yacht-gate’, flipping, and train fares.

His approach to financial retrenchment has been completely mishandled.

Whether you are Chancellor or Clerk to the Parish Council, public finance operates on two distinct budget lines, revenue and capital. If you cut the revenue budget, you must make savings on recurrent expenditure – staff, service levels, and (most importantly) sheer waste. If you cut the capital budget, you must cut investment in major works such as new airports, roads, schools, hospitals, and infrastructure generally.

George has made a big effort in cutting the revenue budget. In many of the wrong places.

Defence is the most important, the first duty of Government being the defence of the realm. He has mutilated the armed forces to the extent that our navy is at its lowest ebb since Henry VIII. For the first time ever we have no capital ship in home waters. The army is at its smallest since the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

And he has increased the foreign aid budget by 37%.

But he has also been slashing capital expenditure, with disastrous effects on the construction and manufacturing industries, on employment, and on the economy generally.

He regards the Treasury as a part-time job, taking second-place to his role of Tory party election tsar.

We now learn from Peter Oborne that he is indulging in plotting and briefing against Ian Duncan-Smith, arguably the most successful Work & Pensions Secretary.

He plans to reduce the welfare budget by £10 billion. Fair enough, but he disdained to tell IDS about it, and it is not a targeted reduction against benefit cheats but a below-inflation cap on the deserving also.

He tried to get IDS fired in the last reshuffle, to be replaced with his own understrapper. He briefed his pal the Executive Editor of the Times, to rubbish IDS on ‘Newsnight’.

And what of IDS himself?

Educated at HMS Conway, devout Roman Catholic, son of a Battle of Britain Station Commander, 6 years in the Scots Guards, a spell on benefit after becoming unemployed on leaving the army, then to board level in business before becoming an MP 20 years ago. All his money comes from his own efforts, but he is not wealthy in today’s terms. He has always been a fierce Eurosceptic and opponent of the Afghan war.

In Opposition, he founded the Centre for Social Justice, and, together with the equally admirable Frank Field, probably knows more about welfare than anyone in Britain.

Here is what Oborne says about him:

‘A committed Christian, he ultimately understands his task in terms of human redemption. He does not believe that people are out of work because of their own fault. He believes that the vast majority are victims of a cruel system, partly created by Gordon Brown, which creates perverse incentives that encourage men and women to stay away from the job market. Mr Duncan Smith believes it is his life’s work to end this monumental tragedy, and to provide the best environment for the unemployed to find work and obtain the human dignity that a job brings with it’.